Thursday, December 10, 2009

Selfish Obama or Selfish Norwegians?

Remember when the world scratched its collective head at the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama? He still had that new-president smell! Now with a hard decision about Afghanistan behind him, he's lost some of his 'Age of Aquarius' cachet with Europeans. And with the prize almost in his hands, another possible reason for the Nobel committee's choice is apparent:

Peace prize laureates traditionally submit to [events] including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

They just wanted to get face time with Barack!

But Obama, on his busy presidential schedule, doesn't have time to pal around with Norwegians. So he cancelled most of the events except receiving the prize. Of course, he could have scored a lot of points with Americans by declining the prize. After all he is - or should be - too busy dealing with two wars, a major recession, and global carbon talks to spend time being congratulated for presumed future accomplishments.

Instead, Obama's trying to be all things to all people, but ends up pleasing no one. Americans aren't impressed that he got a Nobel Peace Prize (4 or 8 years from now might have been another story), and Norwegians are bummed that he doesn't think their prize is worth a three-day junket. And with the real-life decisions he has to make as president, he's attracting a crowd of 5,000 anti-war protesters to Oslo.